Posts Tagged ‘dreaming’

Abdomen Abdominal

Your dream may be directly about your physical health or diet needs. If so it will in some way be connected with food or activities bringing illness or health.

Almost half the dreams on file that mention abdomen, belly or stomach, show the dreamer being shot, as in the example below. This is obviously to do with a particular type of hurt. When human beings learned to stand up, they exposed their vulnerable underbelly. If we are hurt or threatened we tense the pelvic and abdominal area. The sort of hurt referred to is that related to when we might be deeply criticised, feel badly wronged or slandered. This area often feels the pain of a broken relationship too.

So this might point to vulnerability, or the sort of hurt that results from being deeply criticised, badly wronged or slandered. This area often feels the pain of a broken relationship too.

Pleasure in this area show a sense of integration within yourself and with the world.  The solar plexus also links with hunger, the longing to be held, desire to give of yourself, or to be at the real or figurative breast. If these urges have been hurt, we tend to hold ourselves back from active social expression or intimacy in relationships.

We link the abdomen with ‘gut feelings’ or intuition; feeling reactions in a relationship. For instance we use such phrases as ‘you make me sick’ – ‘I can’t stomach what you’re doing’ – ‘you haven’t got the guts’ – ‘like being hit in the guts’ – ‘I’m really hungry for you’. See: solar plexus.

The opposite is to dream of waves of pleasure moving within us, which gives us a sense of integration within ourselves and with the world.

The solar plexus might also link with the potential of our fully active natural drives such as hunger; longing to be held; desire to give of oneself. If these are hurt, we tend to hold ourselves back from active social expression or intimacy in relationships.

The dream might point to gut feelings or intuition; feeling reactions in a relationship. For instance in the English language we use such phrases as you make me sick – I cant stomach what you’re doing – you haven’t got the guts like being hit in the guts – I’m really hungry for you.

Our abdomen is our digestive ability, both physically and psychologically. See absorb

Stomach or abdominal dreams may refer to some dis-ease in the actual organs. We might not be able to stomach something we have met in the everyday world. We may not be integrating our experience.

In a woman’s dream: May refer to her childbearing ability or pregnancy.

Shot in the belly: something to do with sex, a painful response to relationship, or feeling a target of someone’s verbal or emotional attack.

To vomit: A discharging of unpleasant feelings resulting from ingesting, hearing, reading, being told, experiencing, something unpleasant.

Example: The people watching are saying Kill her! Kill her! Kill her! Then someone finds an extra bullet, puts it in the gun and shoots me in the stomach. I wake with my body completely straight with my hands on my stomach. I feel my whole body cracking up inside. Vanessa. LBC

Vanessa wakes to just such tension, with a sense of her body being fragmented. In her dream Vanessa was re-enacting a disaster in which a man rampaged and shot down many people, and she was feeling the fear it engendered.

Here is a very interesting example of relating to such hurt.

I was getting ready to leave and this dark haired guy told me I couldn’t leave, I felt scared and was going to leave anyways, he pulled out a pistol and shot me in the stomach. I fell down, but there was no blood. The thoughts in my head was, “OH NO”. Next thing I remember is that I was still on the floor in the same place and I got up and I remembered being shot but I didn’t seem to have any pain or blood and was moving normally etc. I started looking for a way to leave I was sneaking around trying not to get noticed so that I could get out of there w/o the shooter guy seeing me.

The interesting thing is that even though she could see no hurt came from being shot, yet she was still scared of the guy with the shooter. And it is overcoming such fears that can release you from fears and hurts that haunt us. See What we Need to Remember About Dreaming.

Idioms: Belly aching; have a bellyful; eyes bigger than ones belly; have a strong stomach; turn ones stomach; butterflies in stomach.

Useful questions are:

What was happening in this area in terms of my feeling responses to people and events?

What was the feeling involved?

Was there pain or swelling that might indicate emotional wounds?

Might it have something to do with digesting new experiences in my life?

Is there a health or diet issue that is causing some concern?

See Body

Abduction

You may be feeling influenced by someone else against your own inclinations or desires. This can occur when events in life, such as leaving school or home, push you into changes you do not embrace with pleasure. Or it may be you feel a group of people you are involved with are forming a clique and pressurising you.

If a flying saucer is involved it shows and enormous amount of feelings and experiences are trying to surface from deep within you. They are shown as aliens because your present education and experiences are very different from what you are capable of and what you hold within you.

Happening to someone else: The desire to influence or have power over someone.

Happening to yourself: Feeling influenced by someone else against your own inclinations or desires. This can occur when events in life, such as leaving school or home, push you into changes you do not embrace with pleasure. Or it may be you feel a group of people you are involved with are forming a clique and pressurising you.

Abduction in connection with flying saucer: It can sometimes point to being sexually abused as a child. But some of the most intense research on such dreams or apparently real experiences suggest a powerful full surround virtual reality such as dreams create. They usually show an enormous break through into consciousness of unconscious material that had been repressed or denied . Everyday life and especially western social attitudes and beliefs make it difficult for the core life processes and feelings of connection with the cosmos to surface. When they press for acknowledgment it may feel like, or be presented as, an alien attack. This is because inner energy and awareness is often felt as alien to what one presently believes or knows.

See UFO’s – The Final Answer by David and Therese Barclay – Flying Saucers – A Modern Myth by Carl Jung.

Useful questions are:

If I identify with the alien how do I experience myself? (For help doing this see Stand in Role under peerdream work.

What new or strange experience is entering my life or trying to claim my attention?

Is there something within me or that I feel that I am feeling threatened or swept away by?

Ablaze

See: Fire.

Abnormal

Even if parts of your body or face are shown in a dream to be distorted or abnormal, such a dream is not usually referring to your body. This is about how you feel you are, or your idea or image of what sort of person you are. The dream translates the feelings into your body form. You might dream your face looks subnormal mentally, or your body has strange areas. This refers to an internal sense of yourself not having developed to your full potential, or of psychological hurts having distorted some facets of you, such as your ability to feel positive and creative. Nevertheless, occasionally dreams of this sort do point out illness, so if there is any cause for worry, it is best to go for a medical check. See: body; dwarf; giant

If something else in the dream is abnormal other than ones body: Feelings that there is a problem in some aspect of your life. Look up the object in the dictionary to check what it is.

Whether the abnormal feature in your dream is part of your body, of someone else’s body, or of the dream objects or surroundings, it suggests two things:

1) You may be harbouring fears about how other people see you – your self-image. Or the dream may reflect fears about your physical health. Even if these abnormalities appear on someone else, it may still refer to yourself, perhaps a part of you that has not developed to its full potential, or has been hurt. Our ability to love, for instance, can be hurt, and so may not have achieved its potential.

2) If the abnormality is part of the dream environment, it may point to feelings that something is not right, either with what is happening around you, or how you are responding to it.

 

If something else in the dream is abnormal other than ones body: Feelings that there is a problem in some aspect of your life. Look up the object in the dictionary to check what it is.

Useful questions are:

What did I feel when I looked at the abnormal features?

Do I feel something like that about myself sometimes or about my life situation?

Was there pain or swelling that might indicate emotional wounds?

Might it have something to do with ‘digesting’ new experiences in my life?

Is there a health or diet issue that is causing some concern?

What is it about myself or my life that I feel is distorted or not fully developed?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets – Life Changes

 

Aboriginal Aborigine

In most dreams this refers to your more spontaneous feeling or instinctive or natural reactions to the things that happen to you. Often, like unbidden sexual or religious feelings, this side of your nature may be less conscious than your more daily or socialised reactions. The aboriginal may also represent your less rational or logical side, the part of you moved by feelings, magic, ritual, or ancient beliefs.

In some cases it depicts the side of yourself that may not have much chance to express in most social situations. But it is also the side of yourself that is closest to nature, with keener senses. It is more intuitive and less rational, and does not regard itself as distinct from the natural forces that produced you, or the other wild creatures of the earth. So at times this dream figure may enable you to see things more clearly, cutting away the social complications.

The aboriginal may also be a link to relating well to your own nature energy and motivations.

The modern western adult is often very much out of touch with the life giving processes within them and may feel isolated and often ill at ease in the world. The black figure in dreams, or the native, can give us a much needed connection and balance. It can also be an image of less sophisticated parts of you. See: African; Australian aboriginal dream beliefs.

Useful questions are:

Am I at odds with this natural part of myself?

Is there some love and understanding between us?

Is this being asking something of me?

What can I learn from this side of myself?

Does the primitive part of me need attention or is trying to grow? Use Talking As to understand more about this side of you.

Abort Aborting Abortion

In general this is about losing or getting rid of a part of you, or a project/idea, that was just developing and is therefore fragile. It can refer to a relationship that has not worked, or you feel will not work. It suggests one has aborted, or might abort or lose, an idea, a direction, or an area of one’s feelings such as might surround a love affair; an attempted relationship, direction or project is not supported by your own enthusiasm, love, energy or confidence.

The loss of something developing within you that you must decide whether you wanted it gone or whether you did not want to lose it. Or the feeling you will lose a creative idea, a direction, a project or an area of your feelings such as might surround a love affair; an attempted relationship, that is no longer supported by your own enthusiasm, love, energy or confidence

If you are a woman and pregnant, it may be revealing a fear of losing the child; or you may be exploring feelings to do with abortion; or even feeling something from the past.

The dream is seldom a prediction.

If the abortion is natural: Something your being is rejecting as unhealthy or unwholesome, or something you have been developing that has not worked out.

If dream connects with actual abortion: The emotions surrounding the actual experience of abortion; sense of guilt; the fears of damage to future possibility of childbearing; the feelings about loss of the baby. All these need to be healed in some measure.

Also: The body was in the midst of a process if the abortion was induced. The body has powerful feeling reactions which need acknowledgement, and are frequently presented in dreams. See: baby.

Example: I dreamt that my mum had a miscarriage. When I woke up I knew she had split with her current boyfriend. She rang up and I said, ‘Mum, don’t tell me, I know why you’ve rung, you’ve broken with your boyfriend’. She was amazed and asked how I knew. Antoinette T.

Antoinette’s dream shows how the dream uses abortion to depict the loss of a relationship.

Here is another example:

I woke up sweating this morning, I had a dream that my husband and I were in a car accident and something went wrong and my body was trying to reject the pregnancy ( I have never had a child, but 2 years ago I lost a baby due to miscarriage) and the doctors gave me an emergency C-section. The baby was a girl and extremely tiny, I felt very attached to this little girl, and she ended up dying of complications.

My reply to this woman was – Now the Big you has tremendous feelings and is involved in you as only it can understand. So in your dream your car accident represents what it felt like when your baby miscarried. Something had gone wrong that was why the miscarriage happened.

But you as a woman are a wonderful thing, and the Big you and the personal you are so intertwined, but you/we are usually unaware how much the Big you feels when a baby is lost. It has worked miracles to form this amazing thing – a baby. And to see it lost it felt badly. So you and the Big you were very attached, and the Big you more so as it had formed every cell of the baby.

So what you felt in the dream was a little of the crying for that loss for both of you. When a woman is open to her inner process of Life – the Big you – then she will try to heal her heart and her body of the loss. Mostly it is just swept under the carpet. But your dream is a way of healing. Meeting the feelings of the Big you can be scary because we are not taught that we have anything in us except blood and guts and so have no experience of knowing who we are.

Example: I had an abortion when I was 16 years old I was forced into it. My child would have been 6 years old by now. I been having dreams of this little girl and she keeps calling me mommy it simply breaks my heart. And all I do is cry. But what does it mean to have dreams like this?

Reply – There is so much people never learn from school, television and public opinion. Your child is not dead and of course she is communicated with you in your dreams. Your love for her keeps her alive, and please do not keep ‘breaking you heart’ because it puts a real burden on your growing inner child.

It would take me too long to answer your questions fully here, but if you click on the links you will get a lot of what you need to know. So see – Fertility – Summing Up – The Inner World – Talking with the dead

A friend wrote to me recently and was supporting abortion. My reply was, “I partly agree, but after abortion many women have difficulty having a baby, or the first baby is born with malformations. Examples are my wife’s’ sister whose baby was born with terrible problems. Also my father’s sisters – Roman Catholics were very keen on abortions and not having babies and all died of cancer of the womb.

But here is something I experienced while working as a therapist. Linda had been sent by her doctor because she suffered depression. “The fourth and final session began with Linda lying on a blanket.

Useful questions and hints are:

What have I lost that has been newly developing or emerging in my life?

Is this something I should try to regain?

Does healing need to take place around the feelings in the dream?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming –  Life’s Little Secrets

 

Above

This links with what you feel is superior or has a wider view of your life or possibility. It sometimes shows a sense of inferiority in relationship to what is above you. Or you might be looking at what you strive for and presently seems above you.

In many dreams what is high, or if you are in a high place, indicates you are experiencing the most refined side of yourself – those things that exist beyond body concerns and link you with universal awareness.

If you are standing above or high up: Having a wider viewpoint of your life or feeling superior or in a position of advantage. Sometimes this says that you are living in your head instead of your heart.

Idioms: Above all; above and beyond; above asking; above oneself; above board; above ones station; risen above oneself

See: height; hill; mountain; flying.

Idioms: Above all; above and beyond; above asking; above oneself; above board; above ones station; risen above oneself. ]

Useful questions are:

What are the abilities or achievements I feel good about? Find out by using Talking As.

What am I looking up to or reaching for?

What or who do I feel is above me?

Abroad

Your feelings about that country, or the view or associated feelings you have of it; being in or moving toward a new or changed life situation. For instance just being married might be a very different and new way of living, so be shown in a dream as a foreign country. Occasionally such dreams reveal things we absorbed or learned in connection with that country and its culture.

Being abroad, or mention of a country other than your home, in general is a way of depicting particular feelings or a situation you are in. For instance, if Italy is abroad for you, you might feel it is a warm and romantic place. It would therefore represent a situation in which you are feeling romance and warmth. But a country at war would represent conflict.

If you have not previously been to that country it could suggest exploring new interests, relationship or personal attitudes.

Are you travelling abroad in the dream to get away from a present difficulty or feelings?

So in most cases, abroad suggests a change, or a different feeling or life situation than you are presently in. The dream may be referring to the exploration of new interests, or new areas of yourself – or even of being in a situation you are not at home in.

If you have been to that country, the dream most likely refers to the events or emotions that occurred while you were there.

If the country is a place your family originated from, it may depict the unconscious influences and cultural attitudes you inherited from your family.

If you have lived and worked in that country: You need to define whether you were happy or stressed there and what you absorbed of the atmosphere while there, because the dream would be referring to this.

If abroad or going abroad: Making a change in your life, doing something new; wanting to escape your present environment; getting away from it all; moving into a new attitude.

If someone or something arrives from abroad: A change; something new arising in your life.

Someone of the opposite sex from abroad: Hopes for a new relationship; a relationship that has new features; difficulties with intimacy in present relationship.

See: travel – or specific country.

Useful questions are:

If you have lived in the dream country:

What was your overall experience of that place?

Were you happy there, lonely, what characteristics of the people did you take in?

What is your general view of the country and its people?

Am I or should I be exploring new interests, or new areas of myself?

Is there a situation in my life where I don’t ‘feel at home’?

Explore you dream by using Dream Processing.

Abscess

Painful and withheld emotions or memories. Occasionally it might represent a site of actual physical illness. Perhaps the abscess represents a situation in which old and painful experiences are coming to the surface to be dealt with.

The part of the body on which the abscess appears might give a clue to what part of yourself in terms of personality or abilities the dis-ease is felt.

Abscess still swollen and unrelieved: Emotions still repressed and may be causing psychological infection – influencing views and decisions negatively. The dream abscess may also represent a site of physical illness which may or may not be obvious while awake. In the example below, the abscess has released its pus, or painful feelings, perhaps through Hilary’s prolonged crying. The emotions are, with Hilary, affecting her ‘grasp’. She also uses other imaged word play in ‘near the knuckle’. Washing up shows her clearing away the influence of her ‘evening meal’ of experience. See: individuation; body dreams.

Example: ‘Was looking at my knuckle and saw that I had a nasty boil which had come away as I did the washing up and all that was left was a big hole, pink and healthy looking skin around. It felt very close to my knuckle bone. My lover had told me he was leaving me for good, and going back to his children. That evening, I cried most of the night.’ Hilary K.

Useful questions are:

What part of my body is this on, and am I aware of any problem in that area?

Are there painful past experiences, or irritating thoughts that may still be causing dis-ease in my life?

What does that part of my body represent psychologically? (Look it up in the rest of the dictionary, i.e. arm; legs; chest.)

Explore you dream by using Dream Processing.

Absence-Absent

If it is a person who is absent the meaning of the dream depends very much on what you feel in the dream, and what your relationship is with them. So you need to define what your response to the absence was – were you lonely, upset, glad, hoping for them to return?

Having defined what you felt, then ask yourself what they suggests in your waking life, or what part it is playing in what you are doing. Do you have a sense or worry the person is leaving you, or that there is a distance between you? This may also connect with feelings of being incomplete, as one might if an arm was missing.

If it is an object that is absent from where you expect it to be it suggests that your expectations are not matching reality, or that changes have occurred that you have missed observing.

If the object connects with another person, such as a ring, then it indicates feelings about a change in the relationship. This might simply be a change in the way you feel rather than a change in the other person.

Useful questions are:

Are these my feelings or do they reflect what is true externally?

What am I missing or in need of in my waking life?

Is there a waking event that stimulated this dream?

You can find out more by using these techniques Talking As; Processing Dreams;

Acting on my Dream. Also see What we need to Remember about Dreaming.

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